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Meditation 1363
Crazy Christians Make News

by: John Tyrrell


I really think their take on religion drives some Christians crazy. They seem to lose the ability for coherent thought. They find in their beliefs a basis to embrace contradictory arguments, and potentially destructive behavior, destructive to themselves and to others.


One of the several long running themes on on this website has been the attempts of some Christian legislators to make what they think their god wants the law of the land. They tend to be fairly selective about which of their god's directives should be brought into law, but for them, the idea that their god wants it that way is the clincher in the argument. God wants it, therefore we must make it the law.

And then there's the strange reasoning of Margaret B Ransone, a delegate in the Virginia House who recently cast a vote against the Equal Rights Amendment. Not a surprising vote given she toes the conservative Christian line on abortion, same-sex rights, insurance covering birth control, etc. But her reasons were quite extraordinary. According to her, her god created everyone equal, therefore a law to protect equal rights was unnecessary.

As far as Margaret B Ransone is concerned, her god wants equal rights for women, therefore a law is unnecessary. I can't wait for her to make the same argument next time she gets to vote on a measure affecting same-sex rights or abortion. I can just about guarantee she won't.


In another part of the world, Brazil, we have yet another Christian missionary entering into the territory of an isolated tribe, a tribe which has demonstrated a strong desire to be left alone, to have nothing to do with the outside world, and which is officially protected.

Just this past November another such irresponsible idiotic missionary got himself killed thanks to his intention to convert an isolated, protected tribe on North Sentinel Island. The news articles at the time were full of the dangers he posed to the islanders due to the risk of carrying deadly disease to a group of people with no natural immunity. You'd think that would discourage missionaries from approaching tribes in similar situations.

But no! Given the arrogance and ignorance of many of the missionaries who travel to remote places, combined with perhaps a desire for martyrdom, it was bound to happen again. Some fool was bound to be so morally corrupt as to once again knowingly risk the lives of those he intended to bring to Jesus.

Just a couple of months after John Chau got himself killed, we have the case of Steve Campbell, a missionary supported by the Greene Baptist Church in Maine. Campbell had been working legally with one Brazilian tribe and somehow managed to enter the territory of another one, a protected tribe which wants no contact. The authorities are trying to determine if the entry was deliberate or accidental. If deliberate, Campbell risks being charged with attempted genocide. It is considered that even the common cold virus as it has evolved in the "civilized" world could wipe the tribe out.

The really strange thing about Campbell is that he claims he was teaching the tribe he was authorized to work with how to use GPS. Yes - the GPS teacher managed to stray where he was not supposed to go. He's there in Brazil to help people find his version of god, show them the way to heaven, and also teach them GPS. Well, we know how the GPS work is going - he got lost. We can hope the bible teaching shows an equal degree of failure.


According to Pastor Rick Wiles, operator of the Orwellian named TruNews website, "if you don't serve Jesus Christ, you're automatically Satan's child. If you're not a Christian, then Satan is your father." Given Wile's history of outrageous and inflated inflammatory claims, the comment is not surprising. As usual, his intent is to keep his intended audience of Christian fundamentalists perpetually worked up about the "other" in their midst so that they are blind to the real problems in their lives. In this case, Wiles makes the majority of the world's population into the "other".

The man seems pathologically incapable of truth or actual news in any of his pronouncements.


Maybe I'm wrong calling these people crazy. Maybe they are just stupid. Or unbelievably arrogant. Whatever. The frightening thing is that whether it is lying pastor, elected office holder or self-selected missionary, these people think they are qualified by their religious beliefs to tell other people how to live their lives. They are not.


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